1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for enabling a user to select documents from a summary view of documents and to create a list of the selected documents.
2. Discussion of the Background
There are numerous systems that generate and/or display a summary view of one or more documents. As used herein, the term document means document, message, file, or other unit of information.
One example of a system that generates and/or displays a summary view of one or more documents is a conventional electronic mail (e-mail) system. A conventional e-mail system allows a user to view the contents of his or her e-mail inbox by displaying a summary view of the one or more e-mail documents (i.e., messages) stored in the inbox. FIG. 1 illustrates an example of such a summary view 100. As shown in FIG. 1, summary view 100 includes document summary data for each e-mail in the inbox. Document summary data is data that pertains to a document. For example, for a document such as an e-mail message, document summary data may include any one or more of the following: the title or subject of the document, the sender of the document, the recipient of the document, the time the document was sent, and other document summary data.
Another example of a system that generates a summary view of one or more documents is an Internet search engine. An Internet search engine takes as input a query string, searches the Internet for documents that match the query string, and produces as output a list of the titles and URLs of the documents that match the query string. This list of document titles and URLs is transmitted to a web browser, which displays a summary view of the documents that match the search criteria by displaying the list of document titles received from the search engine.
Still another example of a system that generates a summary view of one or more documents is an electronic bulletin board system. An electronic bulletin board system is an electronic message center that lets user of the system post messages to an electronic bulletin board and to reply to messages that have been posted. Most bulletin board systems allow what is called “discussion threads.” A discussion thread is a series of related messages. Conventionally, when a user accesses a bulletin board system, the system generates a summary view of one or more messages that have been posted to the bulletin board. The user then browses the summary view and selects the message that the user would like to read.
A disadvantage of conventional systems that are capable of displaying a summary view of documents is that these conventional systems do not allow a user to select one or more of the documents listed in the summary view and easily create a list of the documents that are selected. Other drawbacks exist.